The last week I’ve finally gotten back to draw regularly. However I can’t seem to reach my cruising speed again. Not because I rusted or something, so what happened ?

WASTE’s chapter 5 was an unoficial one-shot open end. I was too slow and drawing wasn’t fun anymore (I hated inking on the computer, and I had that 2500€ / 35kg cintiq clogging my desk…so I got fed up).

So when I came back at WASTE. I wanted to have fun in the first place and just get the story forward. I also wanted to experiment new technics: I had been mind blown by some quick speed paints I had seen. These were so fast to do and yet so much more complete than my line works. So it was decided WASTE would switch to digital painting no matter the quality. It would catch up someday.

And that day kind of came. It’s far from being perfect I know, but I feel more at ease than before when trying to express ideas with painting. So what happens in such case ? Yeah, you begin adding some details again…

So basically this is what’s happening. A page today takes 3 times the time it took a few months ago. Because I know, I can and I want to add that little bit of detail that will make it look less…rough.

The thing is I still like spontaneous rough paints, at least those done by others as mine are pretty stiff for now. Also I see some illustrations and I want to get back at it sometimes (I begun drawing like most of comics people, drawing illustrations / Artworks before comics). I just feel like I want to make my best piece from time to time. Just to make a manifest of what I can do at that point in time.

Also I realized at the end of Chapter 20 that doing such thing improved my drawing skills overall dramatically. So there’s a gap between before and after chapter 20…

All in all this is why I’m slowing down. I want to stay spontaneous and tell the story fast but I also want to push some illustrations a bit. For now I failde separating both because every drawing I make is an opportunity… but I think I’ll end up like that : very rough but yet understandable panels and very detailed ones…which means yeah…total inconsistency….

However ! Chapter 28 is done ! Yay for Chapter 28 ! What a relief…Now, time to storyboard a few more chapters. We are reaching a sensitive spot in the WASTE story…

Ok so Chapter 19 is coming out. From here on a few things are gona happen:
-Action gets more intense, after all the planing, talking, explaining
-Next few chapters…(at least 8) are going to take place in a single night (so lots of darkness, artificial lights and no sky)
-Color and image quality goes up, as I get in the night scenes because it’s very monochromatic so it’s easier for me as a color beginner to get something descent.

Chapter 25 which I finished recently I consider as the pinacle of my work as of today. I took more time to draw it and I enjoyed doing quite a bit of details in the pictures.
Chapter 26 which I’m (trying to) working on, is more painful to me as I’m moving IRL and it comes with lots of exhausting extra tasks to do. So basically until 2 more weeks I won’t be able to draw much.
Consequences…
-my buffer is melting before my very eyes ===> stress, next double posting period going further away 🙁
-my hand is rusting, just when I finally did some cool stuff in chapter 25 🙁
-I’m not able to make details for chapter 26. It makes me sad because I really love the story board and it deserves way more care than that…

All in all, this is all supposed to be temporary. I hope things get back in check soon, and who knows, maybe I can even have the luxury to workout again with my rings…

usually I publish 2 pages a day since a while now.
I publish 2 pages, 7 days a week, so to maintain 2 pages a day, I must actually draw 3, so I can absorb the time taken by the storyboard which I do on weekend.

As you may know my day job has nothing to do with drawing, so drawing 3 pages means no lunch break and nothing else but drawing at night.
I have to deal with crazy dead lines imposed by…myself. I have no time for concept art, nor detail and finishing touch.

However, things have slown down a lot lately, so I decided to publish one page a day for the time being and maintain my buffer by drawing 1.5 page a day.
So the pages in chapter 25 appear to be more polished than others. I didn’t rush and wasn’t all stressed about it.

Makes me want to keep it that way. It will depend on traffic. If the rush comes again I’ll switch to 2 pages a day again.

So The post called treat was not THE treat of the chapter. Last page is 🙂
I hope you’ll like it when it’s published (should be 3 months from now…)

Today I allowed myself drawing only one single panel page. This is my illustration page for chapter 25.
The thing is the page just before was also that, and the next page is also that.
That chapter 25 will be something pretty clean I hope.

Recently I didn’t update this website. The admin interface crashed and I just got blank pages with no error info…
So I couldn’t update here anymore.

I fixed it by reinstalled wordpress.
I’m happy I managed to rescue my theme and contents and all…

So since last update a lot has happened:
-Chapter 23 is finished
-Chapter 24 is at a scenaristic tie, I’m working on the story…that takes time.
-I’ve added a new video on youtube
-I’ve discovered and made super nice brushes for krita. The smudge brush engine allows you to get mind blowing result. The problem is performance. But then I ended up reactivating instant preview. First encounter with instant preview was not pleasant at all because at the time I was only working with line art. Seeing my strokes and hatches move a bit while drawing was drawing was out of question. But now as a painter I enjoy it a lot.

Chapter 21 was finished on Saturday morning. This means I did 18 pages in 5 days. More details below the pic

Needless to say my private life is dying (as I draw all this on my personal time).
Once I master this production pipeline, I hope I can have longer nights, work out again at least, then maybe even have a social activity !

I got those scott robertson books near my bed, hardly red 10 pages in a few month. I definitely want to dig in when I can. I wonder when though…

Also in chapter 21 I did something new. Since I was fast enough, I decided to keep aside one page I had a real good feeling with.

1-I wanted to bring it to an illustration level of detail and see where I’m at now. It’s like measuring your FTP (Funtional Threshold Power, cyclists will know what I mean).
2-And even not for measuring my progress, I wanted to attack the topic of detailing and doing illustration again, now that I have been focusing so much on drawing fast…
3-Also a this allows me to feed my patrons with extras. This is for all patrons, the only pledge I made is the 1$ and I’ve not charged anybody yet. So basically for now you can be my patron for free. This will keep at least until I reach 100 patrons.
4-Wanted to remove some dust from my youtube channel, see if I can bring readers to follow me there also…